When do you pray?
In an effort to get people praying the church has traditionally encouraged people to pray at certain times. Personally I like to pray in the morning before the work day begins. However it’s also good to pray in the evenings because it gives you a chance to ask for forgiveness and for peace through the night. Even better to do both.
However there are no set rules about when to pray other than that it is a good idea to pray but the rest is left pretty much up to us.
I love the bit in the gospels (see Luke 11) when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus then gives them a formulae they can use (e.g. the Lords Prayer). Of course in other places they learn important things about prayer as well but here is an example of Jesus’ teaching. He doesn’t make it complicated, he doesn’t give them set times to do it, he doesn’t even expand on the Lord’s Prayer with a whole lot of commentary.If you sincerely pray the Lords prayer every day it will transform your prayer life. I did this – only praying the Lord’s prayer – for a month and I was amazed at how much deeper my prayer life became. I thought at the time I was doing pretty well anyway.
So when do you pray and how do you do it? Please leave a comment so others can benefit.
I doubt to believe
Doubt tends to have a lot of bad press in the Christian faith.
Doubt is often seen as the opposite of faith. So if you doubt then it must be because you are a fallen unbeliever. In fact so bad is this seen in some churches that it’s illegal to mention to anyone that you might have doubts.
There is a difference between the doubt of a believer and the doubt of an unbeliever. Doubt for the believer is not about unbelief – although it can lead that way if left unchecked.
Now don’t misunderstand me because I know that Jesus encourages us not to doubt. Living in a constant attitude of doubt will have a negative effect on your relationship with God. However it is nonsense to assume that nobody ever has any doubts.
I know from talking with many Christians that nearly every Christian (great and humble) goes through periods of doubt, even though few ever mention it.
Jesus must have understood that we would doubt otherwise he would not have bothered to tell us not to do it.
The thing is that if you have doubt don’t suppress them and don’t assume it makes you a bad Christian.
Doubting is often an avenue to greater faith.
There are many different reasons for doubting and I don’t have time in a blog to cover them all.
If you have the time and inclination then read this book (for free):
http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/thomas_factor/thomas_factor.htm
It’s an excellent book all about how and why Christians doubt and how to deal with it in your life.
Times of doubt can be hard and worrying. It can feel like all the things you have based your life on are falling apart. Try to understand though that if you keep working through your doubts then you can build an even stronger faith. I don’t mean this to belittle those whose doubts don’t lead to greater faith but just to encourage those who doubt to explore and not give in too easily.
Sprinkled Blood
to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Heb 12:24
Was God designed by God?
I feel compelled once again to address another argument put forward by Richard Dawkins (if he does nothing else he is giving me something to do at the moment).
Again I wish to say that I believe Richard to be a caring man who is simply trying to do what he believes to be right. I have nothing against him as a person and I don’t share anyones view who says he is the devil incarnate. There have been many atheists who tried to bring God to His knees throughout history and Richard is just another. I am saddened by the vitriol he directs at people of faith and can’t help but feel that people who resort to such language (especially when they are writing a book) are doing so because they know their argument is weak.
I’ve read recently about another of Richards (so called) brilliant arguments. In this one he uses logic (actually I challenge this in a moment) to create a new argument for the non-existence of God. I’m not sure what he wants to prove by doing this because Christians don’t claim that the proofs for the existence of God are conclusive and neither is his argument (if it worked) so it seems to me there is no progress at all. Never mind let’s get stuck in.
Richard claims that he there is an argument for the existence of God which goes like this (the teleological argument):
a) The world is complex
b) Complexity implies a designer (I used implies because this cannot be proved 100% but it’s pretty close).
c) Therefore the world has most likely been designed. We call that designer God.
Richard then (in his so called masterstroke) turns the argument around by saying:
a) God is complex
b) Complexity implies a designer
c) Therefore God must have been designed
He claims that the conclusion (c) is logical nonsense (which it is) so the whole argument falls apart.
However he misses one fundemental part of the argument for the existence of God and that is that the Christian argument is that the world came into existence in a complex way.
So the argument for the existence of God is:
a) The world came into existence in a complex way
b) Complexity implies a designer (I used implies because this cannot be proved 100% but it’s pretty close).
c) Therefore the world has most likely been designed.
It is logical nonsense to say God came into existence (logically God must always exist otherwise he becomes another creature and not God).
The argument includes the part where the world comes into existence otherwise the flaw in the argument is that this implies the world has always existed; something nobody believes (at least nobody I’ve ever heard of).
There are other counter arguments but I can’t be bothered writing them up. I think one is enough.
Although Richard may claim that his argument is fool proof it isn’t and the simple application of logic shows this.
There is no absolute proof for the existence of God and neither is there any proof that he doesn’t. We could argue the logic for hours but it would prove nothing. This is why ultimately belief is a matter of faith and I happen to believe its better because it involves faith but that’s a discussion for another time.
If you would like to read a book report on Richard Dawkin’s book by a scientist who is a fan of his then go here (I warn you though that it’s not positive).
Judging Jesus
I find it interesting that the world tends to judge a person by their followers. Is this because we see the results of following (the fruit to use a Christian phrase) in the life of the follower?
I suppose for those who want to find out about Jesus there is the opportunity to observe those who say they follow Him to see if there is any truth in His claims. The sad reality, however, is that they observe people and then try to decide if God is worth believing in and following.
It’s also a sad truth that most people enjoy a good scandal. So when a follower of Jesus makes a mistake (the bigger the better) it gets to be sensational news.
Let’s take a Catholic Priest as an example. I need before I start to say that I do not condone any behaviour I might write about here. The abuse of a position of power is a terrible thing especially when it involves children. People who abuse children are criminals of the worst kind.
Anyway back to our Catholic Priest. There are some – I’m sure you are aware of this – who have abused children in their care. Sadly on occasions the church has not dealt with the situation well. These are big failings. However does this make Jesus any less than He is?
Can we hold Jesus accountable for the actions of a person who has done wrong? If we say yes then we have to hold Him accountable for every crime that was ever committed – He did after all give us free will. His punishment perhaps should be execution.
However I don’t think we can blame Jesus when a person makes a wrong choice. Without choice we are all going to live a miserable existence.
Of course those who follow Jesus should know better but the truth is they are still people and people are capable of doing stupid things.
Then again why do we concentrate on the few who make mistakes and ignore the many who work hard to follow and do some pretty amazing things?
If you are a Christian then I encourage you to understand that people judge Jesus by what they see you do – be careful.
God bless you as you serve Him.
If you are not a Christian but a critic of Christianity then I encourage you to understand that followers of Jesus are still people (who make mistakes) but this does not change the way that Jesus actually is.
The heart of faith
At the heart of the Christian faith lies the crucifixion and ressurection of Jesus Christ. This one central act defines what Christianity is all about. It is in the crucifixion and ressurection that we come to understand who God is and how much he loves us.
It’s no mistake that Paul says that when he visits the people of Corinth the only thing he knows is Jesus Christ and him crucified (see 1 Corinthians 2:2).
It’s a sad truth that many Christians only ever think about the crucifixion during the Easter period (and even then few ever actually think about the cross).
In my days as a Methodist Minister I always did my best to encourage people to come to church on Good Friday (a public holiday of course in the UK). This was the day to bring your family (although to be fair it wouldn’t suit younger children because it was a preaching service) and think about the central theme of our faith. Invariably the congregation would be small.
Then on another occasion when Christmas was approaching I took the theme of the cross for one of my services. I was taken to one side by one of the important members of the congregation and asked why I had chosen to talk about the cross – which was an Easter theme – when we were approaching Christmas?
Sometimes Christians develop the attitude that the cross was a defeat that God put right on Easter day. This is not true. God was as active in the cross as we was in the events of Easter. Easter helps us understand what was happening on the cross but this is not turning to defeat to victory.
If you ever feel distant from God. Think of the cross. Remember the price that Jesus paid for you.
If you are suffering and feeling that God does not care. Remember the cross and the pain and anguish Jesus took on himself. Remember that God does understand suffering. Remember that suffering does not have the final word as you remember the ressurection.
May God bless you and help you.
Loss of faith in God
Just been catching up on some of the stuff written about Jonathan Edwards when he lost his faith. Jonathan has always been a hero of mine – we are similar in age, have similar interests and I was even an athlete for a while. It was a shock and dissapointment to discover that he was questioning his faith. I tried to contact him at the time but not being a friend this proved difficult and I had to settle for a sympathetic email sent to him through another channel.
I found the whole situation very sad because it seemed to me that no one had ever spent time with him going through any of the arguments for/against God and what problems there might be in the Bible and how they can be defended.
He cites an instance when he was working for the BBC and on a show about Paul someone raised the idea that Paul may have had an epileptic fit on the road to Damascus. Now I know that this is nonsense and doesn’t account for so much of what happened but obviously Jonathan had never been presented with this kind of thing before and it shook his confidence at a time when he was struggling to adjust to a new life.
When will we stop pretending to Christians that there are no questions to answer that might be difficult? And when are we going to start preparing Christians to face this kind of thing? Isn’t it sad that Jonathan went through years of Sunday School and sitting in church etc but was never helped in this way? He indicates that he spent the whole of his life up to retirement from athletics not questioning his faith at all.
In the UK it’s hard enough to find a Christian let alone one who knows anything about the Bible and faith. It’s a rare thing indeed to find a Christian who has any ability at apologetics (defending the faith against the difficult questions).
I know (and yes I do have a very high IQ – even if my spelling sometimes goes wrong, thankfully spelling wasn’t on the test) that it’s very possible to be an intelligent person and still have a faith. I wish we could get beyond this nonsense promolgated by ignorant semi-intellectuals that somehow atheism has the intelligent ground.
Jonathan speaks about feeling happy now he has given up his Christian faith but so often this is just the kind of relief that people feel when they are released from the shackles of church (whether they have lost faith or not). This is also something they don’t prepare you for in Sunday school. I remember my own feeling of lightness and relief when I left the church. I know that church does not need to feel like this but that’s another issue.
I hope that Jonathan has enough Christian friends that he is able to talk through these issues seriously with them. I often find that it’s necessary to seek out someone outside your circle of friends who can discuss such issues with you. It’s always easy to find someone who will laugh at you for being a Christian and who will claim you have at last seen sense when you declare your doubts. It’s less easy to find someone who actually knows what they are talking about. Also sadly there are many Christians who will say stupid things in such circumstances and only make matters worse.
I wish Jonathan well and hope he finds peace as he searches for answers. If anoyone knows him who reads this I would very much like to have a chat with him about his feelings and misgivings. I don’t think its right to try and manipulate someone into believing something but it is right to understand that there are intelligent answers to some of the difficult questions about God and the Bible.
Stuff Christians should be doing
In 1 Timothy 6:11 Paul tells Timothy some of the stuff he should be doing as a Christian leader. Much of what he says applies to any Christian who wants to live as godly a life as they can.
In my last post I talked about the stuff to flee. I pointed out that to flee means to actively avoid them not just passively avoid them.
Now we are looking at stuff Christians should ‘persue’ e.g. actively seek not passively seek.
What I mean by actively seek is that we should put effort in to get these things and not just hope that somehow if we sit near God long enough they will just rub off.
Righteousness – that is going things God’s way even if it is not our way. Simply put doing the right things.
Godliness – that is filling ourselves with God. Not so we distance ourselves from the world. Remember the most Godly man? Jesus. Yet Jesus hung around with sinners and social outcasts (do you know any?). Being Godly means being like Jesus.
Faith – Yes faith requires work. Faith is not some mystical force that falls on you if you pray the right words is a choice and requires a degree of willpower. Now I’m personally in favour of an intelligent faith rather than a blind one but both need to be worked at.
Love – Not a gooey feeling you get when you look at a pretty woman/handsome man but real deep tough but soft all powerful love. It needs to be worked on. It requires effort.
Endurance – I think this is one that someone who is without a church needs to really work on. You will find support in a church if your faith is struggling (or at least in some churches) but if you are on your own you will need to work hard at enduring. I would recommend at least finding some good Christian web sites you can look too when you need a little boost. Find them before the struggle comes along because there is an awful lot of rubbish out there. Try Christian music as well it can really help.
Gentleness – This doesn’t mean putting on a sick smile and patting children on the head. It’s about caring and helping and leading. It’s about showing a better way. It’s like firmly helping your children to be better rather than just shouting at them when they are wrong. It’s powerful and it’s tough. The world doesn’t understand the power of this quality.
So let’s be active in our faith and not passive.
Things to run away from.
In 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 11 Paul outlines some of the things that a Christian should be doing in their life. He talks about things that Christians should flee from. Now when he talks about fleeing he doesn’t just mean avoid he means to run away from.
Often Christians have a tendency to avoid things that they feel might give them a problem but rarely do we go the extent of actually fleeing from them.
What then are these things we should be running away from?
The first is really interesting because Paul talks about ‘an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words’. Anyone who has spent any time in a church will have seen an abundance of this very problem. Yet it’s not just in church committees because this is the very thing that theologians often seem to spend their whole lives on. I’m all for searching for the truth and being prepared to defend your faith (it’s part of our faith) but spending time arguing about things is just wrong.
It seems to me there are some people who just get off on having a good argument. They don’t care who wins (although they always believe they do) but they just like being controversial.
I have had several conversations with some pretty determined atheists but in the end we always have to agree to disagree or the argument would rage forever. Many of these, I’ve concluded, just like being awkward and controversial.
It’s reached the point where I refuse to argue with any atheist over their position. I’m happy to state why I believe something but I won’t get sucked into the angry nonsense where we just fire off counter arguments to each other with no one gaining any ground.
I believe this is just the kind of thing that Paul is talking about here. You think you are doing the world a great service by trying to convince an unbeliever but in reality you are just getting angry and frustrated. There are plenty of people open to talking about God without wasting effort on those who have already made up their mind. Of course an atheist who is willing to listen (a rare and wonderful thing) then by all means tell them what you believe and why.
But it’s not just atheists who get involved in this kind of argument. Christians have spent centuries of good mission time arguing about the smallest of things. Paul urges Timothy to not only avoid such things but to run away from them.
The next thing Paul mentions that we should flee from is thinking that godliness is a means to financial gain. Now I’m sure God can help people get rich if God wants it (more on that in a minute) but this does not seem to be God’s normal way of dealing with things. In truth the person who tries to be godly because they believe this will bring them great financial reward is doing something fundementally wrong. Read 1 Timothy 6:5 if you doubt me. Godliness is about loving God and not for any reward.
The third thing Paul mentions is to flee from wanting to get rich. Ouch! Who hasn’t spent at least some of their life trying to find a way to get rich. The whole of western society is based on this idea yet Paul says we should flee from it! Of course if we read what he actually says its the wanting to get rich that is the problem not actually getting rich. Money is not the issue its what is in our heart that is the issue. Wanting to get rich distracts the Christian from the main purposes of life e.g. love God and neighbour. You can’t be striving to get rich and at the same time striving to love God. The reason being that getting rich is all consuming (I know because I’ve tried myself in the past). So how can a Christian be a business person? By putting God and love for neighbour first in everything – even business.
So Paul tells Timothy some important things. In Paul’s mind these things apply in particular to the Christian leader (this is the context in which Paul addresses Timothy). However these principals apply to any Christian – we see them throughout the Bible.
There are some things that we should not just avoid we should actively run away from them:
1. An unhealthy interest in controversies (do you ever get a buzz from a good argument?). Sometimes an argument is valid but lets not argue for the sake of it.
2. Thinking that godliness is a way to wealth. Do you ever do anything for God on the sole basis that by doing so God will reward you financially? Do it for love of God not for personal gain.
3. Wanting to get rich. This is not just getting rich – although that has enough of its own problems – but wanting to get rich above anything else. Put God first always.
Is religion responsible for all the world’s problems?
I don’t usually get involved in arguments of this kind because in my experience there is rarely a happy conclusion (both sides get angry without resolution). I have studied logic and so have some capacity to make an argument but so often I find people are not actually open to a logical argument but instead make up some argument that they claim is logical (90% of the time it isn’t) to prove their own point.
However just for once I’m going to break my silence because I’ve heard this accusation a great deal lately in interviews with Richard Dawkins. Straight away I want to say that I always find Richard to come across as a caring person whose intentions are good. I don’t accept his arguments – for logical reasons as much as anything - and I think he does have an unfortunate tendency to use inflammatory language. He comes across too often as an angry axe grinder. I refer to such words as “idiotic” and his favourite of “the 20th/21st century mind” that I’ve heard in interviews lately.
Anyway he often uses an argument along the line of: “people do all kinds of atrocious things in the name of a god or religion but nothing bad has ever been done in the name of atheism – therefore atheism is a better belief system”.
At face value it looks like he has a point but if you look closer you will see that his claim is in fact logical nonsense. It’s like saying “you can make tomato sauce out of a banana because a banana is a fruit”.
You see the problem is that you compare a religion which includes belief in something with atheism which is a belief in a lack of something. It’s not logically possible to compare the two in this way.
When did anyone ever do anything (good or bad) in the name of atheism (other than attacking people of faith of course)? Atheists might do something in the name of love or hate or humanity or peace etc but they don’t act in the name of atheism. In fact if they ever did they would be admitting that atheism is a religion – again logical nonsense.
But let’s not sidestep the argument he is trying to make – even if he makes it very badly. Surely the question to answer is: What motivates someone to do terrible things? and Does religion play a unique role in making people do bad things?
What motivates someone to do terrible things?
I would suggest that the list (which is too long to list here) is very long but would include things like: envy, deception, pride, greed, ignorance, anger, abuse of power, lust etc. All the things which in fact the major religions preach against.
Does religion play a unique role in making people do bad things?
Is there something unique about religion that you can’t find in anything else that motivates its followers to do bad things? No. It is a sad truth that people do use religion in this way but they do the same with any ideology. We only have to look at what has happened in the past couple of hundred years (Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao) to see how ideologies have resulted in major genocides and atrocities. If this is not enough we could go back to ancient times and look at the despots who slaughtered innocent people by the score. Any ideology is capable of being abused in this way. Any individual with enough power is capable of doing the same.
Are we then to abandon any ideology on the basis that it can cause atrocities?
Of course not. If we were to do this we would have to reject the following along with religion: philosophy (which also forms the basis for science of course – it’s not just evidence based it relies on theory and speculation), science, democracy, freedom, charity etc.
Sometimes – I would grant – bad people can use religion as a tool to stir up problems but you can’t blame the tool you must blame the person who used it. In the same way you can’t put a knife used in a murder in prison for killing someone. It’s the person who uses the tool not the tool that is at fault.
As a footnote I would also add that most atheists seem to react to people of faith with a dissproportionate amount of anger. If you read what Richard Dawkins writes for instance you would understand the vitriol that sometimes emerges. I can understand that he may feel (in my opinion wrongly) that religion has a lot to answer for by why all the hatred built into the arguments? Surely this is the very reaction he claims is the domain of the world’s religions.
I always think it sad when bad arguments are waved like triumphant flags as though because they are shouted the loudest in the most aggressive way they somehow win. Some people abuse religion and it is always a source of embarrassment to any people of faith where this happens. Others do the same with science and with atheism (no I’m not comparing science and atheism to a religion they are just items on a list).
When can we get away from the aggressive name calling and start to explore the world in a way that moves us towards a better existence? I have taken on board many arguments from many religions and listened carefully to atheists but in the end it is the Christian faith that makes the most sense to me. I am not an ignorant imbecile because I think that way. I have examined the evidence (the same evidence that others draw different conclusions from) and drawn my own conclusions. Why can’t intelligent people understand this simple concept?
Ultimately though for me it must come down to be a matter of experience. The Christian faith is not just a matter of intellectual assent. I have experienced the presence of God as if another person were with me (on many different occasions both in groups of people and on my own). I can no more deny the existence of someone I have experienced in this way any more than I could deny the existence of my own brother. I can’t offer any more evidence than personal testimony. Yes there is no conclusive logical argument for the existence of God (although some get pretty close) however there is no conclusive logical argument that God does not exist (these arguments are of course philosophy and not science – let’s not confuse the two as some do). Also if we only ever believed what science had revealed to us we would be pretty confused people (science changes its mind about the conclusions it draws from evidence on a regular basis – quite rightly so). You are free to believe whatever you will about my testimony but your claims will not change my experience.
Is religion responsible for all the world’s problems? No people are.
